Have You Got a Nasty Case of Presenteeism?

Posted: 30/08/2016 by
Cox Purtell

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string(3435) "Are you suffering with a nasty case of Presenteeism? Is it causing you emotional and physical discomfort?
Presenteeism applies to those people who are physically present at work but are not emotionally engaged in the work they are doing. Effectively they are sitting at their desk each day plodding along and doing just enough not to get fired. Sound familiar?
Research shows
When I started researching this buzzword I came across some legitimate current research:

Presenteeism is causing a whopping $33 billion loss to Australian industry and can be caused by personal problems, work related stress and job insecurity. What’s the result? Well, it can spread like a rash to other employees and evolve into absenteeism, low morale and poor retention which ultimately impacts the productivity of the company.

A recent Gallup survey showed that 1/3 of employees with low levels of engagement had called in sick during the previous month. Disengaged employees are in fact three times more likely to call in sick than engaged employees and chances are they won’t even be sick.

Employee engagement as a concept is often considered by senior managers to be something light and fluffy that Human Resources devised to keep themselves busy. Let me tell you from experience, there are much more fun ways to keep ourselves busy in HR! Often it isn’t given serious consideration until employees start leaving a company in quick succession and those same senior managers turn to their Human Resources team to explain why this is happening.
What can an employer do to cease the spread of presenteeism?
Ask yourself these questions and listen carefully to the truth that lies below the flowery stuff you are initially telling yourself:

How can I deliver on helping them with their short and/or long term goals and desires?

The answer to these will be very different for each employee as one size does not fit all. Yes, it will take time but without taking said time to understand your employees, you won’t be able understand how to engage them.
What Would Branson Do?Sir Richard Branson is well known for being very passionate about engaging his employees. Virgin offers excellent benefits to its employees and he passionately talks about engagement in almost every interview.
On many occasions Branson has stated “if you take care of your employees they will take care of your business” and “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to”. As someone who dropped out of school at 16 and is now quoted as having a net worth of USD $5 billion, he knows what he is talking about!"
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Are you suffering with a nasty case of Presenteeism? Is it causing you emotional and physical discomfort?

Presenteeism applies to those people who are physically present at work but are not emotionally engaged in the work they are doing. Effectively they are sitting at their desk each day plodding along and doing just enough not to get fired. Sound familiar?

Presenteeism is causing a whopping $33 billion loss to Australian industry and can be caused by personal problems, work related stress and job insecurity. What’s the result? Well, it can spread like a rash to other employees and evolve into absenteeism, low morale and poor retention which ultimately impacts the productivity of the company.

A recent Gallup survey showed that 1/3 of employees with low levels of engagement had called in sick during the previous month. Disengaged employees are in fact three times more likely to call in sick than engaged employees and chances are they won’t even be sick.

Employee engagement as a concept is often considered by senior managers to be something light and fluffy that Human Resources devised to keep themselves busy. Let me tell you from experience, there are much more fun ways to keep ourselves busy in HR! Often it isn’t given serious consideration until employees start leaving a company in quick succession and those same senior managers turn to their Human Resources team to explain why this is happening.

What can an employer do to cease the spread of presenteeism?

Ask yourself these questions and listen carefully to the truth that lies below the flowery stuff you are initially telling yourself:

How can I deliver on helping them with their short and/or long term goals and desires?

The answer to these will be very different for each employee as one size does not fit all. Yes, it will take time but without taking said time to understand your employees, you won’t be able understand how to engage them.

What Would Branson Do?

Sir Richard Branson is well known for being very passionate about engaging his employees. Virgin offers excellent benefits to its employees and he passionately talks about engagement in almost every interview.

On many occasions Branson has stated “if you take care of your employees they will take care of your business” and “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to”. As someone who dropped out of school at 16 and is now quoted as having a net worth of USD $5 billion, he knows what he is talking about!